UFO: AftermathReview

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Earth is under attack, but is it really worth defending?

By Dan Adams

Steve and Tal will both tell you that X-COM: UFO Defense changed their lives. While they had been slipping towards geekdom and the path to a lucrative career in video game journalism and criticism already, it was that game that sealed the deal. A few of years back, when I first started working here, X-COM was also voted the number 1 PC game of all time by the 5 editors that were working on the site at the time. Since that time, we've seen Tal and Steve's hopes dashed by the cancellation of X-COM: Alliance, and then pieced back together by the announcement of the "true" progeny of X-COM: UFO Defense, called UFO: Aftermath. Sorry to disappoint you guys, but like the sequels to the original that just never captured the same feeling of the first, UFO: Aftermath just isn't as good as the classic, both in character and in gameplay.

UFO: Aftermath is a squad based, tactical strategy game at heart. The story follows the invasion and near annihilation of all life on the planet by an alien invasion. The bastards went and released a cloud of spores into the atmosphere, which eventually fell to the surface, killing or mutating nearly all forms of life with the exception of some "lucky" few, of which you are one. You'll take the reigns of the defense of the planet and begin to fight back to take your home back from the invaders.

The story itself is presented fairly blandly, which is sad because it actually has a bit more depth to it than the story in the original X-COM. You'll have to uncover quest missions to learn the reason behind the attacks and how to stop them eventually. Those that remember X-COM will remember the fun and excitement that the opening comic book style intro planted into the experience right from the start. You'll also remember the fun aliens and their wicked attacks on cities and the planet in general. You'll get none of that here. Aftermath takes a much more serious approach to things and suffers for it. It's not that the idea is bad, it's just the presentation of that idea. There are no cutscenes to propel the story along. This didn't need main characters, but something to showcase new knowledge and give a little bit of a reward would have been nice.

In fact, the graphics and presentation in general aren't so hot. Characters and aliens are mostly uninspired (even though I have a guilty weak spot for the gigantic Car Crab). Terrain in outdoor areas isn't badly textured, but can be boring as hell, especially after you've seen it so many times (more on that in a second). The good spots come from the look of the city portions of the game. There's some good texture and artwork here. But once again, you'll be seeing this same stuff over and over because the levels are randomly generated using a select palette. Thankfully, building styles can change depending on your location in the world, just as the terrain does, to add a bit more spice to your game.

Any fans of the original will see similarities immediately. The game begins by loading up a 3D globe of Earth, only missing city locations. From this area, you'll pick a starting zone, instead of actually choosing a point to place your first base.

Bases in Aftermath are handled in a much different manner. Instead of constructing a base from pieces, having to assign scientists and engineers to labs, and actually laying out your bases in a strategically helpful way, you'll be charged with taking many, many bases located throughout the world. Once you've captured one of these bases, you can leave it as a military base (from which you can launch your Chinook transport helicopter out onto missions) or change it into an engineering base or research base. The more research bases you have, the faster your research will go. The more engineering bases you have, the faster your development of equipment and technologies will go. None of these bases can have their layouts changed. So when the aliens attack one of them, you'll have to defend what is basically a randomized base that has so many weak spots you'll think it was planned by the Charger's defensive coordinator. Frankly, I liked the old way better. While it makes the game a little easier to manage and streamlines research and development a bit, it also dumbs the process down too much. If you do end up losing a base to alien attack... who cares? You've got 30 more scattered around the world.

This seems to be the road chosen for this remake. Simplify! For instance, fighter planes, which you used to have to build hangars for, as well as repair and refuel, now seem to be limitless in their numbers. If your fighter planes are shot down by the alien spacecraft they were sent to combat, it matters very little.

In fact, whether you actually get to a mission on time or not, regardless of it's priority levels, doesn't seem to matter either. In X-COM, there was a definite priority response to crisis. If you and your team didn't save a town in time, you would lose funding from the country in question. Here there are no penalties aside from the possibility of a minor setback in amount of owned territory. Money has been removed from the equation altogether. You'll have so many salvaged weapons and gear by the time battles start getting challenging that you'll be able to outfit 10 groups of 7 instead of the one that you're allowed to send out on missions.